The current inspection has been carried out in various technical fields. Examples of the subjects for the current inspection include an electronic device substrate and a circuit wiring substrate such as a semiconductor integrated circuit and a flat panel display (FPD). These elements are minimized in size, densified in arrangement, and advanced in performance, and a contact for the current inspection jig such as a contact probe coming into elastic contact with a sample which is disposed on a current inspection jig used in the current inspection is also required to be ultrafine and miniaturized.
The inventors of the present application propose a Ni electroformed pipe as the contact for the current inspection jig which is partially provided with a spring structure to cope with the ultrafine, miniaturized structure (Patent Literature 1).
The Ni electroformed pipe partially provided with the spring structure of Patent Literature 1 is manufactured to be ultrafine and thin such that the external diameter is 32 μm to 500 μm and the internal diameter is 30 μm to 450 μm, so that a high elastic property can be exhibited. The Ni electroformed pipe is manufactured by applying a manufacturing method (Patent Literature 2) proposed by the inventors of the application.
In addition, regarding the ultrafine spring structure, there is proposed a manufacturing method in which, after the resist layer is formed on the outer periphery of a hollow ultrafine pipe and the resist layer is irradiated with exposure beams to make a spiral groove of a uniform slit width thereon, the etching is performed by using the resist layer as a masking material and the ultrafine pipe wall on the formed groove portion is removed (Patent Literature 3).